A long-awaited posthumous memoir by Russian dissident Alexei Navalny was published around the world on Tuesday, containing sometimes humorous details of his life, including his time spent in prison and the now famous prediction that he was expected to die there.
Navalny, a top rival of Russian President Vladimir Putin, began writing “Patriot: A Memoir” after a near-fatal poisoning in 2020.
The book describes his youth, activism, personal life, and his fight against Putin’s increasing authoritarian grip on Russia.
Navalny worked on the manuscript and diaries that became the basis of the book until his death eight months ago, at the age of 47.
The US magazine The New Yorker and The Times of Britain published excerpts from the book earlier this month, including Navalny’s terrifying anticipation of his own death.
“I will spend the rest of my life in jail and die here,” he wrote on March 22, 2022.
“There will be no one to say goodbye to… All anniversaries will be celebrated without me. I will never be able to see my grandchildren.”
Navalny was serving a 19-year prison sentence in an Arctic penal colony on charges of “extremism”.
His death on 16 February at the age of 47 was widely condemned, with many blaming Putin.
Navalny was arrested in January 2021 after returning to Russia after suffering major health problems following a poisoning in 2020.
“The only thing we should fear is that we will surrender our motherland to be plundered by gangs of liars, thieves and hypocrites,” he wrote on January 17, 2022.
In a candid and sometimes light-hearted tone, Navalny also talks about issues far from politics or activism, such as his fondness for cartoons and his love for his wife, Yulia Navalny.
‘Cheerful indifference’
He also described the drudgery and futility of the daily prison routine: “At work, you sit for seven hours at a sewing machine on a stool below knee height,” he wrote.
“After work you sit for a few hours on a wooden bench under a picture of Putin. It’s called ‘disciplinary activity’.”
Recalling his childhood, Navalny remembered that the absence of chewing gum in the Soviet Union signaled to him his country’s inferiority on the world stage.
After the breakup of the Soviet Union, student Navalny witnessed corruption among university professors and a wealth grab by oligarchs in the new Russia.
The only hope he had in post-Soviet Russia’s political elite was Boris Yeltsin, whom he calls a drunkard surrounded by thugs, and Dmitry Medvedev, president between 2008 and 2012, whom he calls both corrupt and stupid. , disappeared with.
Navalny said he hated Putin, not only because he targeted him personally, but also because he felt the president had deprived Russia of two decades of development.
In an entry dated January 17, 2024, Navalny answers the question asked by his fellow prisoners and prison guards: Why did he return to Russia?
He said, “I do not want to abandon or betray my country. If your commitments mean something, you must be willing to stand up for them and make sacrifices if necessary.”
Navalny writes that in the Arctic colony where he was sent in December 2023, it was impossible to walk more than half an hour due to the severe cold.
He was declared dead under unclear circumstances on February 16, 2024.
The New York Times said, “‘Patriot’ reveals less about Navalny’s politics than about his fundamental decency, his wry humor and his (mostly) cheerful indifference under circumstances that would impress a lesser person.” Will do.”
“It is important to publish these types of books,” said Caroline Babulay, French publisher Robert Laffont of the book, which has a first-run print run of 60,000 copies.
“Patriot,” which sold several million copies worldwide, topped Amazon.com’s best-selling books list on Tuesday.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
